Why are "Islamists" intrinsically anti-democratic?

Dictator Bush has placed the faÃ§ade of democratization at the center of his Middle East adventure. At his inauguration he declared, “Democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can know: America sees you for who you are: the future leaders of your free country.” Bush’s hypocrisy is at its best in these words.

The exiles and other victims, who continue to suffer at the hands of Bush’s favourite dictators, know the depth of hypocrisy in Bush’s statements like these. The war lords in the US believe that in these words show Bush “is sincere, confronting not only adversaries like Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but also pro-American dictators like Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.” This is not as much an attempt at self-delusion as it is at deceiving others with deceptive terminology.

The joke of democracy in the occupied world goes on to give Bush and his cronies an opportunity to celebrate ephemeral success. More and more puppet dictators are being “elected” from Afghanistan and Iraq to Palestine under the banner of democracy.

Supporters of Bush, who criticize democracy of Hosnie Mubarak in 2005, must keep in mind that he is not in power since a few years. He is there since two decades. Mubarak has been serving the US and Israeli interest since long. He deserved criticism since the declared emergency in Egypt and never lifted since then.

Now that it is time for him to go anyway, a few critical articles about his state of democracy cannot give any credit to the pundits of democracy, nor will it pave the way for another pro-Israel and US puppet to take power. Such shallow criticism of dictators is not enough to fool victims of Washington’s most favoured dictators.

Those who know the real face of the champions of democracy, standing neck deep in Iraqi and Afghan and Palestinian blood, also understand the value of the statement that House has treated Mubarak, Zine El Abidine and Saudis’ “commitments [to democracy] with skipticism.” Time for such jokes to be effective has long gone past.

The war lords in the US complain that Washington should be cynical about “Islamists” commitment to democracy because “many of which embrace elections but cast aside democratic values.” Citing some unconfirmed statements from FIS leadership to give the impression that once come to power “Islamists” would not hold elections is yet another hypercritic attempt by the democratic tyrants to isolate those from all elections whom they don’t approve.

In other words, it would be democracy for a specific kind of people, voting for each other, whereas all those, having a different take on issues would be excluded and eliminated: so much for the tall claims of equal opportunity and equal rights. Remember this is just the beginning of this kind of democracy.

The pro-Israel lobby of the war lords in the US expect Bush’s terrorist administration to declare Hizballah in Lebanon an outlaw organisation and throw it out of the election process. Same is their attitude towards Hamas participation in elections. Those who condemn Hizballah for supporting Syrian “occupation” must not forget their wholehearted support for the much longer and far worse Israeli and US occupations.

If someone could be thrown out of the election process for supporting foreign occupation, then all those who ran for elections in Iraq and Afghanistan do not even deserve to be part of the sham democracy because they are the main collaborators in consolidating foreign occupation of their countries.

All the sham elections that we are witnessing in the countries under occupation make a mockery of the champions of democracy who claim to be working for freedom and liberation of the oppressed.

The White House is not flip-flopped on Hamas. It is just a strategy to buy more and more time for Israel and to see if this could somehow tame Hamas’ resistance to the Israel’s criminal occupation of the occupied Arab land.

Above everything else, it is part of the same deceptive tactics that the US and Israel have been employing since 1990 under the banner of the peace process, that may never come to an end in favour of the occupied people.

The pro-Israel war lords condemned statements from White House spokesman Scott McClellan, calling Hamas’ successful candidates “business professionals.” They argue that election “participation does not make candidates democratic.” They forget that the same sham elections do not make democracies, whether these are in North America or in the Middle East of South Asia. The United States would remain the worst two party dictatorship, a criminal police state and the top human rights abuser of all times. In the Middle East, Israel would remain the lone aggressor and apartheid state, whose very foundations are laid in pure racism. The fig leaf of democracy is hardly enough to cover its crimes against humanity.

It sounds so shameless to hear from Israeli sympathisers that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is a “recipient of recent State Department outreach” and it “has a long legacy of violence.” Give us a break dear war lords. Such statements don’t suite those who are standing neck deep in blood of more than 150,000 Americans, Afghans and Iraqis. Even if we agree that brotherhood has “murdered thousands,” it does not give Washington a licence to extend or deny anyone a licence to participate in the electoral process anywhere in the world –” particularly keeping its recent record of starving 1.8 million (repeat million) Iraqi to death with genocidal sanction enforced on the basis of a pack of lies.

No matter how strong militarily, the US doesn’t have such a right to begin with. Those who look forward to the US for such legitimacy only legitimize the violence, terror and naked aggression that propelled the US to prominence. Better that the rest of the world say a resounding no to Washington’s interference in its internal affairs just as no one has the right to interfere in the US or Israeli election process. The rest of the world is not sold to these world mastering demi-gods.

It is not Washington’s infatuation with “Islamists,” it is the double standards and transparent hypocrisy that makes us see Condoleezza Rice bolstering the legitimacy of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq with invitation of its leader to the White House. Who has not visited this White House in the past? Remember the beloved Mujahideen “resistance fighters” from Afghanistan? This invitation doesn’t signal that the Bush administration has endorsed the Islamist group over others. It shows no one is the enemy as long as one is ready to lick Washington’s imperial boots. The moment the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution stops serving the US agenda, they would instantly become the chief terrorists.

Washington’s attitide is a typical gesture of the morally bankrupt tyrants to embrace anyone as long as one temporarily serves their short term goals. The war lords keep complaining that “gangs belonging to the Supreme Council enforce Islamic law on cities like Basra and Kut, breaking up student picnics and tearing down posters championing other groups,” but the US embraces its leadership. At this juncture in the criminal occupation, the US would do almost anything and we are witnessing a perfect demonstration of the US doing almost everything to take control. Embracing the Supreme Council for a short time is nothing compared to the worst ever crimes against humanity it has committed for the same purpose.

All this does not come under the promotion of genuine democracy. It is for consolidation of a morally and socially bankrupt empire and imposing its way of life on the unwilling populations in the Muslim world in particular. Those who call it a process of democratization are as much morally and ethically bankrupt as those who are actually committing the historically unknown crimes against the humanity. It is not “Islamists” who are intrinsically opposed to this kind of democratisation. It is every decent human being who opposes man’s inhumanity to man at this scale and the most debased level.

To be candid, it is utterly futile for the Islamic groups and parties to participate in the sham elections under Pakistan type of dictatorship or Jordanian kind of monarchy. The sole objective of the Islamic groups and parties should be to facilitate living by the standards of Islam for people in general. If they come to power within the corrupt dictatorships and monarchies, which are committed to secularism, they would be hardly able to do anything other than perpetuating the same systems, which is not the objective at all.

Success of MMA in Pakistan and Islamic Action Front in Egypt is a classic example of this failure. Everyone knows that the only great achievement of MMA is constitutionalizing dictatorship in Pakistan. They could hardly do anything with regard to transforming system to work on the basis of Islamic principles. Instead things on critical issues such as interest based banking further slipped back to where they were before MMA’s coming to power.

Same is the case with Islamic Action Front in Jordan. It is not that mechanisms for electoral accountability exist due to which Islamists lose their charm. The Islamic Action Front lost half its seats between 1989 and 1993, only after it failed to fulfill its promises. It simply couldn’t work within the corrupt monarchical system, which the champions of democracy hardly have the guts to criticise. Thanks to the bootlicking king of Jordan, whose bootlicking makes democracy irrelevant for Jordan.

It is so obvious why the Muslim world cannot be democratic in the American sense of this concept and within the existing corrupt, authoritarian and secular systems in the Muslim world. For any system in the Muslim world to succeed, whether call it democracy or Islamic state, all parties have to embrace the strong commitment to facilitating living by the core principles of Islam. Being Muslims, they can no more hide behind the faÃ§ade of secularism.

Muslims can no longer afford to keep the Qur’an and Sunnah aside, period. How to make living by these basic sources possible is the basic question to undertake. Title of state system in the Muslim world has become irrelevant, or at best secondary. What counts is the principles on which the governance mechanism in the Muslim world must be based, and the people who must rule: not puppets and secular bulwarks who serve their masters abroad. But those who feel themselves accountable to the electorate in this world and the Creator in the hereafter.

Those who base their legitimacy upon a higher power do not intrinsically become unwilling to accept popular rebuke. It is the arrogant worldly tyrants, like Bush and Blair, before our eyes, who consider the millions protesting their policies in the streets as mere crowds. One man, one vote, one time in five years with no further right to be heard in between two elections make tyrannies, not democracy.

By demonstrating their true tyrannical colours and limits of abusing the present system, Bush and Blair have proved that democracy as we know –” government of people, for the people by the people –” is merely a dream. They also exposed the helplessness of people before their gangster mentality towards ruling the world.

Whether it is because of the rigging in elections or the power of the co-opted media or the strong backing of the corporate world, but there is something wrong that makes democracy redundant simply because the people have become helpless and powerless before a handful of tyrants.

The people cannot influence policies of the modern day democratic tyrants, nor are they able to remove them. Even if they are able to remove, they have hardly any choice between the next two evil presented before them for election due to the two party dictatorships or the total absence of different approach to tackling the issues.

The more time goes by, the more the people would realise how they have been hijacked by a minority of capitalist tyrants and religious fundamentalists and how they have been taken for a ride for this long. Unfortunately, people in the non-Muslim world have no alternative before them and hence have to live with the democratic tyranny for some time to come. Muslims stand out in this struggle against imperial terrorism in the name of democracy because they have a system to promote and live by.

That’s why the Islamophobes raise the cry that “Islamists” are intrinsically against democracy, forgetting that almost every decent human being is tired of this convoluted and twisted form of democracy. The only difference is that Muslims have an alternative model which scares all those who have high stakes involved in the present tyrannical order. Their survival lies in maintaining the status quo. They would do anything and go to any length to stop Muslims from establishing an alternative governing mechanism. The more they struggle, the more they would expedite demise of the moribund democracy.

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